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Staff Profiles

Dr Nicholas Mithen

Background

I am an intellectual historian of early modern Europe, and have to date worked mainly on eighteenth century Italy, as well as on connections between the Italian peninsula, central Europe and the British Isles. I situate my research between the history of scholarship, the history of political thought and the history of religion and belief. I am mostly interested in how these fields relate to one another, and what early modern histories can tell us about the modern world, and how modern historians have conceived of the early modern past.

I joined Newcastle University as a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Research Fellow in January 2020. Before this I completed my PhD in History at the European University Institute in Florence, during which I held visiting positions at the Universities of Cambridge and Vienna, and a research fellowship at the Franckesche Stiftung zu Halle in Germany.

Research

At Newcastle I am working on the EU Horizon 2020-funded Marie Sklodowska-Curie Action project VIA MEDIA ITALICA, titled 'The Scholar, the Jurist, the Priest: Moderation in Italy, 1700-1750'. The project looks at the 'moderate' culture of intellectual reformism which took root on the Italian peninsula in the 'early Enlightenment'. It is based on extensive archival research conducted across Italy, and poses a reinterpretation of Italian intellectual history in the first half of the eighteenth century. The project also aims to interrogate the concept of moderation from a historical and political-philosophical perspective.


Publications